Blaming Technology

Something happened yesterday that really annoyed me… so I had to check.

Being part of any community is somewhat easy. Well this one group I am lucky enough be part of, are technically all in competition with each other, at least to some degree. However the members also support each other, complicated you may think? Exactly that. It is a complicated group, support one person and upset another, or get things wrong and watch the fall out.

Now I do consider myself to be an excellent communicator. I do not mean my spelling or grammar is 100% correct all of the time (waiting for the comments below) but I do mean I can read situations. I am able to form the right response to get the right outcome most of the time…

Yesterday was one of those moments, please let me explain.

Whilst on my mobile, I read a post on LinkedIn. Someone asked for a help in curtailing a wayward team of people and they were asking for recommendations. It had only been posted for an hour and you would consider this to be a relatively fresh request. There was very little action on the post and I thought I could recommend a great speaker. Someone that I truly respect and think of as a (very) distant mentor. Clicking on the link, I saw that the very last comment was from this very same person, I thought it would be an excellent fit and they had already seen the post. Being in the first 6 comments on this post, I knew I had to work fast to get their name up in the bright lights.

All I needed to do was support their post.. that was it.. simple.. easy.. done in less than 10 seconds and sit back feeling satisfied I helped a fellow speaker.

I actually felt quite good about supporting someone and after a few hours I started getting notifications that others had commented on the same post. Interested I took a look and saw that others had also recommended the very same person. Massive result I thought, there is no way that this person could be ignored.

A few extra hours later I manage to get to my laptop and thought about checking LinkedIn again. More comments on this very same post and more people saying the same name. Now being on a larger screen and able to use a proper keyboard and mouse, I start to read through the comments.

I saw that the very person I had recommended had commented on all the other people’s posts, thanking them and leaving a lovely note (typical of this person I thought). Then a thought, why had this person not liked or left a note on my comment. I had not only recommended them but I tagged them in the post as well – come on, where is my recognition?

I scrolled up, opening comments as I go. Then to the last 10 comments, seeing more comments and likes from this very same person. I was getting quite upset and even a little irritated. I had put their name forward and thought a little thank you was not too much to ask for. However scrolling up to my comment, I then saw it.

We have all been there, we have felt scorned, ignored and righteous in all our actions, well this feeling changed in an instant. All I wanted to do was help but at that very moment I felt sick. I reread my comment.

All I had to write was “I second ***** they’re a great speaker” but I messed this up, a simple task, that took seconds was now staring at me in the face and it was making me feel sick.

Using a mobile is great, instant access to all the profiles, all apps, all social media anywhere any time. All of it on a tiny screen and a tiny keyboard. Why haven’t we had this for centuries?

You see, instead of supporting this one person with what I thought I had actually typed, technology took over, auto correct “came to my rescue” and it ended up hashing my recommendation. There was no way I could recover this stupid mistake and very quickly deleted my comment.

I started to hope that they had not read it. Why would they read my one comment, when others had also recommended them.. it was not as if I had also tagged them in my post was it… Arrgh!!

So a day later, I have thought about apologising directly. At the same time I do not want to shy away from technology, instead it is about learning, growing and becoming even better. I refuse to change the idea that I am an excellent communicator, I can blame auto correct all I like but I have to accept responsibility for my own actions.

I pass on my apologies in a blog, hoping that this person can understand what happens and in time forgive a stupid typo.